Hawaii Fair Lending Coalition
In early 1993, several native Hawaiians met with Bank of America to inquire about loans for homes on Hawaiian Home Lands. The bankers were condescending, handed the group some brochures, and discouraged them from applying.
This experience led Nā Po’e Kōkua, an organization established to assist native Hawaiians with housing and related matters, to look into the issue of how banks in Hawaii were treating native Hawaiians, especially with regard to redlining, the practice of denying services to residents of certain areas based on the racial or ethnic composition of those areas. The lack of mortgages available for Hawaiian Home Lands was identified as a significant problem.
Their research showed that Bank of America and other banks in Hawaii were discriminating against customers of native Hawaiian and Filipino descent. In the meantime, Bank of America had announced plans to acquire Liberty Bank.
So Nā Po’e Kōkua formed the Hawaii Fair Lending Coalition (HFLC) to bring together other native Hawaiian and advocacy groups to challenge the merger.
Following six months of complaints to the Office of Thrift Supervision, the FBI and the Justice Department, and the Office of Fair Housing, and an “oral argument” hearing where dozens of kupuna and community members testified, many in the Hawaiian language, the Federal Reserve ordered Bank of America to make $150 million in loans on Hawaiian Home Lands.